Memories of Things Best Forgotten
by Dardanelle
Summary: The truth is you can't unkiss a person any more than you can unread a book. S2-tag.
1. Chapter 1

Angstfest ahead. At least to begin with. It's fanfic so it's allowed :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Timeless. Please, if I did jokes made by boys outside bathrooms would be at least a little bit funny...

This one is for the lovely Gracielinn. Not because she requested or prompted a fic but because she is one of those generous, beautiful people who not only write great Timeless fic but also takes the time to read & review what others write. The Timeless ff-community would not be what it is without Gracielinn. So if you only have time to read one fic today, please skip this one and go read one of Gracielinn's. And make sure you leave her a comment, no essay necessary, a smiley or a thank you will be just as appreciated, I'm sure.

* * *

They slept together 77 years ago. Seven years after their first kiss.

If you take time travel into account.

In real time, theirs is a romantic relationship measured in hours rather than years.

Or did it begin with _a half-drunk master sergeant a history professor walk into a room_?

Regardless of when they began, a wife returning from death stops it. Them.

* * *

She is true to the person she wants to be. She has to be even when she hears the hesitation between his words when he calls. The pause, opening up a space for her to say, what? She tells him what he needs to hear.

This is what you do when you love someone.

Would he be the person she loves if he had simply signed the divorce papers? Would he have been able to let go of Jessica if she had let her walk away in the hospital parking lot?

She tries her hardest. She avoids and pretends. Avoids looking at him, avoids the kitchen and any other place when he is there. She pretends he is just a team member.

The problem is he was never just a team member to her.

Irritating, yes. Reckless, yes. But always making her feel. And the truth is you can't unkiss a person any more than you can unread a book.

So as hard as she tries, it doesn't get any easier. It is especially hard when she tries to avoid him and he doesn't seem to get it. When he wants to talk about time jumps they did not go on together, as if everything is as it used to be, as if their lives have not turned into the stuff of a bad reality show with all of them stuck together in a bunker.

At times like this she is one breath away from telling him to leave her alone. To stop being an idiot. But perhaps it doesn't matter, because it's impossible to let go and forget someone when you live under the same roof.

* * *

"Sorry, I didn't realize someone was in the shower."

"My bad, I forgot the chair."

"You always do."

Maybe it's the hangover from the vodka or an aching back from her stubborn persistence to sleep on the couch even when Flynn offered her his room. Whatever it is, it makes her drop the avoidance and pretense and instead of leaving she simply unhooks his towel and walks over and hands it to him. "Nothing I haven't seen before" at the tip of her tongue at his look.

But before any of them has said anything her memory betrays her for letting her guard down.

Another bathroom on another morning many miles and 77 years away from this one. That time it was he handing her a towel.

Her back to him pretending to look for something on a shelf by the sink her voice is almost steady.

"Are you just about finished? I need to wash my hair."

For good measure she calls after him when the door has almost closed behind him. "Maybe you could try and remember the chair next time. For Jiya's sake."

* * *

Sometimes the memory of his arms around her is so strong their weight and warmth almost feel real.

* * *

She knows there was something he wanted, or needed, to tell her when he asked about the jump to Texas. But she needs to unlearn how to read him. To not notice when his tone is too light to match the shadows on his face or the way he stretches his back to avoid slouching when he is tired.

She also do not need to watch 'Citizen Kane'. Who left that to play when you switch on the TV? Instead she curls up, stretching out on the couch is out of the question, and tries and to sleep.

He is tenacious, she'll give him that. She almost drops the bottle when he says "Too late, I already finished that."

"Don't sneak up on people!"

"I'm sitting at the table."

"In the dark."

"Didn't want the light from the kitchen to wake you."

"Do you mind switching it on now. I'm looking for another bottle."

"No need, I've got one here."

She takes a glass from the draining board , grabs the bottle from the kitchen table and starts for the lounge area.

"I almost shot your mother today. But in the end I couldn't."

She stops in her tracks and sinks on a kitchen chair. So that's what he needed to tell her. She opens the bottle and pours herself a double measure of bourbon and tops up his glass when he slides it towards her.

"That's the second time you've hesitated and let someone from Rittenhouse get away."

It's too dark to see his face but she hears his soft gasp.

She relents.

"I guess you could say she had it coming."

"Lucy, She's your mom."

"You were right about her. She accused me of being a witch in Salem."

She stands up to grab the bottle again. "And on that note I think I'll go to bed. Goodnight, Wyatt."

Sometimes she longs so much for his hand in hers she can almost feel it there. She can't sit across him at a table in a dark kitchen at midnight when that happens.

* * *

If she were more dramatic she would have said that having a barbecue is almost as fun as Pennsylvania in 1754. It started at breakfast.

"So Jiya and I were thinking we could have a barbecue. We could rebuild one of the old oil drums. Could be fun."

 _Yes, excellent idea, Rufus. Can't think of anything I'd rather do, possibly a mother-daughter spa day. Good thing Agent Christopher won't allow it._

"Just make sure it's daytime. Don't want to draw any attention people."

 _Thanks a lot, Denise._

"So tomorrow good for everyone? If Emma doesn't decide to jump."

 _I'm counting on you, Emma._

Emma doesn't come through so here she is getting smoke in one of the few outfits she has that is not three sizes too big and or from a menswear department. (She doesn't count the dress she stole the on the second morning in Hollywood. That stays hidden away until she can either throw it away or wear it. Both equally impossible at the moment.)

She hands Christopher a fresh beer and sits down next to her on the makeshift bench. Her gaze drifts over to Wyatt who says something about being from Texas so he has to stop them and literally forces Rufus and Jiya to step aside from where they seem perfectly capable of burning the food without her help.

"I don't know how long it will be, but the minute you can leave the bunker you will."

Either the agent is clueless to what has happened or she knows everything. It's difficult to tell with her.

"I had guards outside my room twenty-four seven the last six weeks I stayed with my mother."

"Still, this can't be easy for you."

Lucy's gaze moves to Jessica. Whatever she and Flynn is laughing about Wyatt is not amused if his frown is anything to go by. But then Wyatt frowns whenever Flynn is around.

Christopher follows Lucy's gaze.

"Any of it."

* * *

This is a different kind of missing him from when they were apart for six weeks after the explosion at Mason's. Then she didn't know if her missing him was grieving or longing.

Now she misses him when he is seven feet away from her preparing her dinner.

It would be so easy to allow herself to walk over to him now or lean back into him when he puts his hands on her shoulders. To walk down to him where he is standing at the bottom of the steps at the Lifeboat waiting for her as if Jessica was not waiting behind him.

Why is she the one who keeps remembering that he has a wife again?

"I'm not hungry," she says to Christopher and ignores Jiyas's "Where are you going Lucy? There's cheesecake for dessert."

She is halfway to her old room when she remembers she doesn't have a room anymore. The bathroom will do. Tough luck if anyone needs to use it.

She gets eight minutes of peace and quiet.

"Lucy, are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Or I was until you barged in."

"What do you need?"

"I need for you to leave."

"Look, I know things are weird."

"You don't get it, do you?"

"What?"

"I need for you to leave me alone."

"That might be a little difficult as we live and work together."

"I know, but can you try? No barbecues, no midnight drinking, no catch-ups after time jumps."

"I know things are awkward between us. But I'm trying. What do you need from me? Tell me."

"I need for you to stay away. To give me a chance to fall out of love with you."

* * *

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

This was meant to be a tag to _Hollywoodland_ and I meant to update this sooner, i.e. before 2x08 and the double episode season finale, but RL had other ideas. So this is now a S2 tag.

Disclaimer: See Chapter 1 if you are desperately curious to find out if I own Timeless or not. Or be reckless and take a wild guess.

* * *

He never realized how often he touches her. How often she hugs him.

Not until they don't anymore.

The first time they don't he's only a few metal steps away from reaching her, seconds away from cradling her as carefully as she cradles her arm. Her gaze moving from his to the person behind him stops him. Jessica.

* * *

When the doctor Agent Christopher finds somewhere, Flynn and everyone else and their grandmother have taken their turn at her bedside and left he keeps watch, soothing her through feverish dreams. Sometime in the night he falls asleep, his head resting on the mattress almost as close to hers as it did 77 years ago. Her breath mingling with his the way it did then.

It's Jiya who walks in on them this time. Unlike Rufus she doesn't turn around and leave. She is one of Lucy's team members and that is what he is again too.

* * *

He slips. He forgets.

Lucy is so much better at remembering than he is.

* * *

His life is two timelines that have collided.

What he loved and what he loves.

He tries to make the past, Jessica, his present again.

* * *

It happened. All he ever thought he wanted. Jessica is alive.

Lucy reminds him of this miracle when he acts like he has forgotten.

When he doesn't remember and lets his instinct lead. When his focus narrows to Emma holding a knife against Lucy's throat.

* * *

It is almost a relief to put on the kind of armor he used to wear. Deployment and raids always were easier in a way. Life with all its problems disappears, if only for a while. He has to let it not to be distracted.

And then Carol is in his aim. It's like a parody of his training days with human targets popping up and having to make split second decisions on who is good and who is bad. Part of him wishes he was a younger version of himself, inexperienced enough to pull the trigger on reflex, seeing the world in black and white instead of in gray scales. Only seeing a Rittenhouse leader looking back at him, not Lucy's mother.

* * *

A Master Sergeant and a History Professor walk into a room ninety-nine years ago and a woman they have never met knows by just looking at them.

* * *

Lucy calls them a one night relationship.

And he can't really say anything to that. He has lost the right to do that.

* * *

She does slip and forget when Alice Paul has been killed. She leans against him briefly

But when she asks him "How do I look?" he doesn't say "Beautiful." That would have been them in another conversation in another time.

"Your hair, you might wanna..." His fingers brush the air over her left ear instead of stroking back the strands of hair that have come loose.

This is them now.

* * *

"She's not here," Jessica says when he walks into the kitchen area and continues to lounge area.

"I wasn't looking for her."

"I'm a bartender. It's my job to read people. You two are an open book."

"I... we..."

"Look, nobody wants their husband to have the kind of connection with another woman that you two seem have. I'm not saying I like it, but I'm trying my best to make allowances for how this time travel thing have made you close. And even if I can't wrap my head around me being dead I kind of get that too."

"Jess, I'm trying."

"The thing is, you shouldn't have to try."

"And one more thing," she adds when Wyatt is scoping coffee into the coffee maker. "When I said she wasn't here you just assumed I meant Lucy. Why didn't you think I meant Agent Christopher or Jiya?"

* * *

"Who made this coffee? It's like tar!" Flynn says to everyone and no one when he empties his mug down the drain. "The catering in this place is every bit as delightful as the furniture."

* * *

Their history and the history they travel to begin to echo with memories. They arrive at another long ago war Wyatt would probably have fought in had he been born at another time. But this time Lucy declines his help before she rides off without him. They are no longer the close knit unit of three they used to be.

* * *

Lucy ends up at her mother's side as she takes her last breaths after all. Not in the way she first imagined, by a hospital bed with Amy next to her. But the death that follows she could never have imagined, never have prepared for no matter how many times Jiya talked about her vision.

She would never have imagined that she would damn a gun for not not firing when she holds it to someone's head.

That this would be her life now.

That the drunk Master Sergeant dozing in the waiting room at Mason's would one day tell her he loves her when they sit on a concrete floor in a forgotten bunker reeling from the loss of their third team member and friend.

That only moments later she would meet her future self, an amazon offering them another miracle.

* * *

Lucy meets herself in the kitchen early in the morning.

"Do you want some scrambled eggs?"

"Have I learned how to cook?"

"No. But Wyatt is a real sleepy head so I'd starve if I'd wait for him to make breakfast. Sometimes I threaten to make pancakes. That gets him out of bed faster than when the alarm for the Rittenhouse time travel machine goes off. Can't do it too often though, or he'd see through my bluff."

"Any more advice?"

"You know I can't."

It's a surreal experience to see yourself struggle with your convictions.

"Just... just don't be too hard on yourself. Or him. You'll have enough battles to fight as it is."

* * *

Where do they begin again and when? In the wake of a dead mother and a wife who returned from the dead only to disappear again?

Just because they have met their future selves, and as Jessica said, they are an open book, it doesn't make the present any easier. There is a gap between their now and the snatches of tenderness and love they see between the persons they will become. Time travel will not bridge that gap, only they can.

"Are we really that obvious?" Wyatt asks her.

Flynn's snort can (almost) be heard across the bunker.

* * *

They are something that had barely began.

Lucy begins again by wearing the dress she stole on a sunny morning 77 years ago in Hollywood. It is a celebration after all. They all have a few more bruises but Rufus is back.

Wyatt won't let her near the barbecue. He doesn't even let Rufus help, no matter how happy they all are to have him back.

For some reason Flynn's comment to Lucy and Rufus "You do realize this is a barbecue and not a Viking funeral?" qualifies him to help.

"Stop moping people and help mix the salad and set the table," Agent Christopher tells them. "You too Connor, no excuses."

* * *

It's only in the movies that people know what to say. Someone has already written the lines for you. They hesitate, say the wrong thing or nothing at all, but it's a start. The fire from the barbecue went out a long time ago and the lumpy scarves Agent Christopher gave them before she went in don't do much to keep them warm but they are both reluctant to leave the makeshift bench and each other. After an awkward version of musical chairs Jiya and Rufus are now in what was Wyatt's and Jessica's room, Lucy is in their room, leaving Wyatt on the couch and Flynn where he was.

"This is just because I'm cold," she says when she leans into him.

"Okay." She feels him shift to put his arm around her.

"Careful, I'll give it ten seconds before someone will come our here," he says when she lets her palm rest against his jaw.

"I'll risk it. You're not the only one who can be reckless you know."

Lucy yawns. "You need to shave. If you stop shaving I won't be able to tell you apart if we run into future Wyatt again."

Stars become visible as the sky darkens.

"Are you asleep."

"No, ma'am."

* * *

They are not fate or something prewritten but a choice. The result of the small, stupid, courageous and monumental choices they've made. Of choosing the possibility of something.

* * *

FIN


End file.
